The Underpup Part 4

"Not awfully--not with you, Pip."

h.e.l.l's Kitchen and Park Avenue pushed on together.

And at daybreak the forest ranger opened the door of his cabin to them. He and his wife had been up two nights with a sick child, and he was half-asleep and not at all sure that he wasn't seeing things.

"We're Happy Warriors," Pip-Emma said, "and we're all lost."

It wasn't anyone's fault that the forest ranger's child had the measles and that the Penguins who had never had the chance to catch anything went down with it like ninepins. The Penguin Circle was quarantined, and at night Pip-Emma sat alone by the campfire. The doctor had said: "She'll be all right. She's been exposed probably to every germ known to man. She's a survival of the fittest." So Pip-Emma was allowed to help nurse the Penguins and sit on their beds when they were convalescing and tell them hair-raising stories of h.e.l.l's Kitchen. She made up some of them. And the adventures of the mounted-cop uncle grew gorier and gorier. The Penguins seemed to like them gory.

Little Janet was sicker than any of them. But when Pip-Emma held her small feverish hand, she'd fall contentedly asleep.

Except for Janet's feeling so bad it was kind of fun. At night Pip-Emma and one of the Pelicans lighted the Penguin campfire so that the Penguins in their open tents could see the flames dance. And as they got better, Pip-Emma would start them singing--"We are the happy Penguins."

Pip-Emma had a song of her own which she'd learned from Pop, who had sung it on Salisbury Plain:

"I'm 'Enry the Eighth, I am.

I've 'ad seven wives before, And I don't mind if I 'ave one more--"

It was a ribald, not very intelligible song. But it had a rousing chorus. Miss Thornton, in her tent writing rea.s.suring letters to anxious parents, looked up at Prissy, who was helping in her wheelchair.

"Is that a Camp song?" she asked.

"No," Prissy said. "But it's all right."

And then came the last night of all. And Pip-Emma sat alone by the campfire for the last time. Everything was packed and ready. Tomorrow they were all going home. Tomorrow Pip-Emma would be back with Pop and Ma and the old Gang. She'd have an awful lot to tell them--about their Great Adventure, and the Camp powwows and singsongs and marshmallow feasts. She'd learned some things, too, that she'd have to break to Pop and Ma very gently--the way you wore your napkin, for instance, and not picking your teeth, or making noises with your soup.

She'd never see Janet again or Clara or Prissy or Miss Thornton or the trees or the stars or the lake s.h.i.+ning under them. She wasn't going to cry about it, though.

She was trying so hard not to that she didn't know she wasn't alone any more. There was a little scuffling sound. She looked up. And there were the Penguins, all around her, wrapped in their blankets and looking just like Penguins.

Clara VanSittart was making a speech again. "We want to give you this, Pip-Emma," she said, "and we hope you'll always wear it."

It was the sacred Penguin Badge.

"Gee, you bet," Pip-Emma said huskily.

They were gone, as quickly, as silently as they had come. It was as though they knew how Pip-Emma felt.

But little Janet crouched beside her. "Don't cry, Pip."

"I ain't--I'm not crying."

"Yes, you are. I'm crying, too. Listen, Pip. Next year you're to come back. Miss Thornton says so. 'Cause you're a real Penguin."

"Honest?"

"Honest. And Daddy wrote. He says that was a swell idea about not staying mad in two rooms. He says you must be a swell kid. You're to spend the Christmas holidays with us--and p'raps I can stay with you.

Daddy says your Pop and Ma might be able to knock some sense into us all."

Pip-Emma choked. Janet was holding her hand hard.

"Pip--"

"Yes?"

"We're going to be friends always, aren't we?"

"You bet."

Taps sounded. It was a sad, lonely sound in the night. Pip-Emma stood up bravely.

"We gotter go in now," she said.

Because, after all, she was coming back next year, and some day she was going to be top Penguin. So she must keep discipline.